it's 234k new york and presidential politics is on borrowed time. both candidates with a laser focus on ohio while the clock strikes midnight. >> i'm toure. romney mnsz's resurgence is disappointing news for republicans. thaerts, i said republicans. >> i'm krystal ball. the highest court takes on higher learning. this could shake up college admissions all across the country. >> first he ruffled big bird's feathers and now mitt romney is leaving sponge bob out to dry. who is next, little mermaid? >> a little fantasy football ahead of the biden/ryan smackdown. it's all in "the cycle" for this tuesday, october 9th. exactly one month from today, all the ads, debates and campaign stops will finally be over, but until then we're stuck politics mode.

it's the last day of voter registration in ohio. mitt romney is heading there tonight to start an intense five-day push in the state after spending the morn in iowa. combined, iowa and ohio have 24 electoral votes up for grabs. obama won both states in 2008 and has a stlim three-point lead in these two battlegrounds. speaking of battlegrounds, word today the romney camp is moving resources out of pennsylvania and into ohio hoping to target early voters in the buckeye state. the first poll was conducted entirely after last week's debate shows romney with a four-point lead monday likely voters. it's a 12-point swing. if you look at gallup, obama leads among registered voters but romney leads among the all important likely voters. it's why both pull out the big guns on the trail calling in bill clinton and chris christie, while the running mates are holed up in debate prep. they face off thursday in kentucky. one month out, and we start

today with "washington post" political columnist dana millback. >> hi, s.e. >> hi. let's start with with the pugh poll. it puts hit ahead likely voters and registered voters and he's made big gains among women voters and middle class voters. is it about one debate night? >> it's time for obama to panic. we did this a couple of weeks ago when the polls were the other way, and then it was time for romney to panic. it's probably not time for anybody to panic. this race is now what it was weeks ago, months ago, and that's a fairly close race it will on election day. it's decided by two, three percentage points. we've seen the bounces and swings. this one is going in romney's direction. it appears if you look at the battleground states, it still favors obama. nothing has fundamentally changed. if things keep move inning this

direction and this just isn't a reaction to one very bad night for obama last week, well, then, we talk about something else. it's not clear that's what happened yet. >> don't tell that to andrew sullivan, because he is having a breakdown in "the daily beast" today. he laments what he calls devastating new positill numberd he calls the president too air grant to take a core campaign responsibility too seriously, too arrogant to give his supporters kwwhat they deserve. what do you make of that? >> i think andrew is always interesting and provocative. he makes a good point. it probably overstates it. remember a couple of weeks ago all the rats were abandoning the sinking romney ship. he'd be a great president. he's a lousy candidate. there's nothing we can do. guess what? he's back in the game. he probably wasn't out of the game at the time, and certainly obama is not out of the game now. i just think, you know, this is be the story line for the next

48 hours. >> it's over, dana. it's over. pack it up. forget it. >> let it go. >> i'm taking the next four weeks off. >> we should point out something potentially significant did change today. that is the barometer i thought we should pay the closest attention to. for the first time in the entire campaign today, mitt romney took the lead on that. that's on the change to switching to a lickly gallup model that puts him ahead five points. there's a dirth of polling since the debate, so it remains to be seen they will confirm romney has the lead in all polls. it seems the average of all polls all year has obama aahead. the media coverage has been skrush constructed around obama as the winner. if romney takes the lead consistently, is that the danger for obama? the media narrative changes and he's coming from behind? >> that's true. it's a pretty big if. the poll of polls is much more

reliable than individual polls, because they can be all over the lot. i do think there is definitely the risk of media overreaction just as we overreacted to the sense it was curtains for romney before. i suspect there will be some of the overreaction now. now that they brought out big bird, i think that really will change the trajectory here. >> game changer. you know who i miss from the republican primary? >> who do you miss? >> newt gingrich. not enough nut ewt in this campaign. let's take a look. >> he said, i will close enough deductions that wealthy americans will not get a net tax cut. now, that's a pretty clear subscription. >> and it's impossible to -- >> let me say this. standing on the stage with you in arizona, this is what mitt romney said. number one, i said today we're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20% including the top 1%. mr. speaker, you mentioned that

your opponent, mitt romney, had a problem with being dishonest in the primary. my question is, was he dishonest when he said that? >> i think it's clear he changed. >> newt talks about the fact true supply siders wouldn't be happy with him saying the top brackets won't get tax cuts at all. conservatives are happy because he's up in the polls, but if he looks like a loser again, will we see conservatives critical of him before coming out and criticizing his rhetorical shift to the center? >> who would expect he would do the etch-a-sketch in one week, change every position like he changes his clothes in the morning. it would be done over such a short period of time, so dramatically and he'd get so little blow-back. i think what happened is because the conservatives got so desperate and they were looking at four more years of president obama, they're willing to let romney get away with this. i don't think romney was doing this by design. you say i'll wait until they're

desperate and roll out the etch-a-sketch. it had that effect. they were so certain they were losing, a lot of the conservatives will hold their fire saying, look, in flip-flopping romney is a whole lot better than having obama in there. they're letting him get away with it. now maybe the left will let obama get away with something. >> surely a lot of people said who is that president standing on the stage? we don't recognize him. a lot of them said who is the former governor on the stage. we don't recognize him at all. they were talking about an intervention in the campaign where ann and tagg pulled him aside and said, we have to shake things up and have a more moderate image and do the let mitt be mitt approach and have tagg take a bigger role in running the campaign. the romney camp says this is hogwash, but do you think that's true and what other changes do you think we might see coming

from this new kitchen cabinet approach? >> i'm always a little suspicious when you have this story glorifying the family members sweeping in and letting mitt be mitt. i mean, the problem a little while ago is there was -- it wasn't there was not enough mitt but there was too much mitt. he needed to say something differently here, and that's what he did. he got conflicts advice. he had one very strong night. i don't think that means that the campaign has fundamentally been altered. that doesn't mean his strategy has been fundamentally altered. he caught obama on his heels because it was a dirch person than obama battled against for the last several months. now, you know, biden and then obama will show up to debate the person they saw. who knows. actually newt gingrich may come out. >> dana, to that point, you wrote in krur column today about romney's foreign policy speech yesterday and you detailed some of the many dramatic changes in

position in foreign policy that he's taken over the course of this campaign. you wrote in part, scrubbing one's brain clean of previous positions has been mitt romney stock and trade, in fact, his foreign policy speech monday to the virginia military institute was one long gargle and rinse of the candidates' previous positions. the upcoming debates are going to have a foreign policy focus. do you think that the speech yesterday actually opened him up to a line of attack from the president? >> well, to some extent, but, look. i don't think this election even as we look at it four weeks from now is going to be about foreign policy. it will be maybe about the changes in position. will it be about the changes in position on the 47% and on taxes and on other things? also, the brainwashing has occurred over a period of time. he didn't just fundamentally come out yesterday and chuck everything. he was evolving towards these new positions, which may continue to evolve. for obama to go after him on this, it's like nailing jell-o

to the wall. it's not an easy task for obama, because not exactly sure where he's criticizincriticizing. i don't think it opens up a clear line of aattack and i don't think americans pay a lot of attention to foreign policy. >> dana millbank, thanks. see you soon. what this means for the other names on the ballot. it's in the spin as "the cycle" runs on for today, tuesday, october 9th. [ male announcer ] eligible for medicare? that's a good thing, but it doesn't cover everything. only about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you.

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sinchts with 28 days to go, it's no surprise the gop is pumping the benjamins into key congressional races. two leading republican groups are spending $13.5 million on house battles across the country. republicans are already in control of the house, and they want to keep it that way. they had a good chance to take the senate until the kink of junk science opened his month. with the senate in the balance, let's talk about favorite senate races and surely what's going on in missouri never ceases to amuse me. the crazy uncle has been let out of the back room and into the party. he keeps talking and he keeps staying alive. he's only 3 points behind. missourians are saying we don't like either people. who do we like least, best, bad, worse. it's problematic both ways, but the gop has refunded to todd akin to supporting him, newt

gingrich has endorsed him, rick santor santorum, i believe you like him, too. >> i do. >> they both endorse him. it seems that the gop once running from todd akin has said winning the senate at all costs is valuable. >> some in the gop, some. >> it's interesting, you know. missouri there's a mirror image situation in massachusetts. missouri is a red state that doesn't really like the republican candidate personally. you look at massachusetts, and another key senate race. this is a blue state that really likes the republican person, scott brown, whose re-election is critical to taking back the senate. if he wins it's because of likability. we have an interesting new poll that highlights the two basic forces driving these races. one slis likability. brown is ahead by three points. this is a shift from three weeks. now brown has the lead. look what's happened and look at

the second number on the screen there. right now it stands at a 16-point obama lead in massachusetts. a week ago when warren was ahead in the same poll, the margin was 28 points. what happened between last week and this week, this poll was conducted in the three days after the denver debate. just as we saw after the democratic convention, enthusiasm among democrats soared and warren took the fleed massachusetts over brown in the wake of the democratic debate perhaps in massachusetts and elsewhere. enthusiasm may be down a little bit and enthusiasm may be up a little bit. you have a basic dynamic where the smaller the gap is at the top of the ticket between obama and romney in massachusetts, the better scott brown has a chance of surviving. the number is basically 25 points. if you're under 25 points in that obama margin. i like scott brown's chances. between 25 and 30, it's a toss-up. over 30 i say elizabeth warren wins. last week it was close to 30. now we see it in the teens again. that's why scott brown has moved ahead i think.

>> another race where the presidential race is looming large is my home state of virginia where we have tim ka e kaine, who is the former governor of the state. george allen's major argument is he's too close to the president. if the president wins virginia, kaine wins. the other interesting thing is how remarkable the shift in the debate on women's healthish use and abortion has been in the state largely because of a very ugly and contentious debate this year about personhood and trans vaginal probes in virginia. in the debates it's a huge topic. they got into the weeds of discussing how contraception works, which is crazy. >> do they know? >> one did. one of them did. >> always good to hear old white men talking about that. >> how contraception works. you can look at kaine's website what he said about abortion then

and now. his position hasn't changed, but the way he frames it is totally different. in 2005 at top of that page it said, i have a faith-based opposition to abortion. as governor i will work in good faith to reduce abortions and talks about his opposition to partial birth abortions, et cetera, et cetera. now on his website he says, i strongly support the right of women to make their own health and reproductive decisions and for that reason, will oppose efforts to weaken or subvert the basic holding of row v. wade. total different framing on the issue. he's been on the offense and has a 12-point gap in favor of kaine with women. >> it was a down and dirty throw-down on the mean streets of connecticut this weekend. i've been walking the linda mcmahon chris murphy race. they debate this had weekend. it got really ugly. murphy accused linda mcmahon of

essentially plague plagurizing plan. to that she had this to say. >> you thought this was a core nation, but now you're in a serious race with a serious woman and you have rezoerted to these kinds of policies. >> we're going to move on to the next question. >> desperate. >> it's like professional wrestling. >> or something. >> i wonder why? >> or something. rcp average has murphy up only 3 points in a state that does not elect republicans to the senate. quinnpiak has linda up one point. sean sullivan in "the washington post" explains some theories. one is she completely he reoriented her campaign towards women and it's worked. chris murphy is not richard bloomen that you will and he's not as well liked and he had a slew of bad headlines about

foreclosures and not paying rent. we'll see. i'm sangwin for ling da mcmahon, but i don't think connecticut we vote red this year. >> we see all the polls that say opposite things. the polls have stopped making sense, so who knows where we really are. straight ahead, tomorrow the supreme court takes up affirmative action. in our guest spot today ashgs law professor and legal analyst say the policy actually hurts those it's supposed to help. they present their case. i cross-examine next. this is the bree prenear of the week. former model and goldman sachs analyst helps them sell online. she knows content sells, so they also launched a companion online magazine anz ultimate source for what's in. for more watch your business

sunday mornings at 7:30 on msnbc.

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is affirmative action unconstitutional. justices hear arguments in the case of abigail fisher who claims that the university of texas used race as criteria to assemble the freshman class leafing her as a white person on the outside looking in.

nine years ago the court said race could be considered in college admissions to help diversify the student body. the court has become more conservative sense then, and opinions on affirmative action have tightened. the outcome could change how the country runs its education system. according to the next guests, a shake-up is exactly what they need. the new book argues in favor of the controversial mismatch theo theory, that affirmative action hurts beneficiaries because they're inadequately placed in schools where they cannot compete. in the guest spot is richard sanders professor at ucla and stewart taylor junior editor of harvard law review, co-authors of the new book out today "mismatch." welcome, gentlemen. >> thanks for having us. >> thank you. >> richard, let me start with you. you say affirmative action places mirnlt students with

underperforming scores in schools they're not qualified for, thus making it hard to pass exit exams and so they leave not fully prepared. >> yeah, it's important to keep in mind that we're not saying that students aren't qualified to be in college. it's which college they go to. so the idea is that if you are admitted to a school where your credentials are lower, say 00 or 300 points lower than classmates. the teachers teach toward the middle of the class and you're likely to learn less. there's an outpouring of research showing in the sciences, blacks and business panics have high attrition rates because of mismatch. in law school they're twice as likely to fail bar exams and there's a loss of self-confidence among students that receive it. >> i know toure will question you on that. thomas sole has written extensively about affirmative action. he felt there was no evidence it

works. more blacks rose out of poverty. in the 20 years between 1940 and 1960 before any civil rights legislation than in the years following. most blacks lifted themselves out of policy but liberal politics and black leaders have claimed credit. what credit is there that affirmative action has worked? >> thomas is an impressive thinker and i have great respect for him. i'm not necessarily aattacking it. it's clear that the condition of black people nationally has improved greatly since the '60s, which is when affirmative action started. it's kind of an argument about whether it was because of anti-discrimination laws and just racial progress as opposed to affirmative action. we think that if you assume for the sake of argument that it was helping at first, helping to elevate people out of poverty, it has now become a machine spinning out of control. the preferences are very large,

as rick said. we think it's leading people into -- it's really entrapping people to go to college that do not tell them you're not likely to do very well here. they just want to koubt their racial numbers and it's supposed to be temporary. it started in the '60s and is supposed to be temporary. the supreme court said it should end in 25 years, and that was nine years ago. so when is it going to end? if the university is left to their own devices, it will never enld. >> the naacp legal defense fund calls your work junk science, and they stand behind that. there's 11 big names statisticians who are nonpartisan from harvard, stanford, u penn on and on that said your methodology is completely flawed and your findings should not be taken seriously. let's not litigate that here. let's talk about stacy dale and

allen kruger, who economists who push lished a major peer-reviewed essay. in the national bureau of economic research that found that selectivity definitely has economic benefit force black and latino students. no economic benefits over the long term for white students but unquestionable benefits for black and latino students. what do you say to that? >> alan kruger didn't say they were unquestionable benefits and our work is peer reviewed. there's a mountain of articles on which it's based. those 11 scholars focused on one debate in which there isn't a single critique that is peer reviewed. the weight of the evidence is on our side. kruger is an excellent economist and his article is an important one, but there are about six articles i can point you to all very well-done that can mix conclusions on the earnings issue. whether you earn more, if by getting a preference over your long-term career is an open question. the issue of whether you

survive? science, whether you pass bar exams, whether you are likely to have good grades, those aren't largely debates. they can see there's a problem. >>ed i would add the so-called empirical scholars that said our work was shoddy. i think their brief is basically dishonest, and the most obvious way is they claim to have disproved everything we said and they don't even mention, let alone attempt to disprove, five or ten of our most powerful arguments. their method is to pretend the argument doesn't exist. >> you suggest it's better for black and brown students to go to second tier schools rather than to go to harvard or yale, the first tier schools. the entire supreme court comes from harvard or yale. almost all presidents harvard or yale. all the top of corporate america. so if we follow your prescription, then the entire

leadership of america would become entirely white, which is just a barely whitewashing of what we already have. how is that better for america and for the black and brown students you would send to second tier universities? >> the problem with your argument is the fallacy of whether leaders come from top schools because they went to the top schools or because the top schools were good at aadmitting the strongest people. the fact is there's lots of black and brown people at elite schools without racial preferences and they wouldn't have the cloud of whether they benefitted from racial preferences hanging over there. we're not arguing to it eliminate racial preferences. our argument is to curtail them in a couple of ways, butt mostly to provide transparency so people know what they get into. when african-american students are admitted into law school, they aren't told one in three blacks entering law school will graduate and pass the bar in the first attempt. they don't get any information. that seemses to elementally

unfair. we want better information from researchers and the students to benefit from the preferences. >> stewart, let's talk some about how would you would change affirm itch action. william julius wilson argues in the truly disadvantaged, we have a different critique that results in a process in the sense that those with the greatest economic resources among the less advantaged individuals are the ones actually tapped for higher-paying jobs and higher education through affirmative action. he argues as a tool to increase diversity, affirmative action is successful. as a tool to lift people, it's been a failure. how could we reform affirmative action and make it more effective in that respect? >> william julius wilson is a great scholar and he's right. his point you summarize and the affirmative action instead of it.

>> they're by and large affluent blacks and hispanics and it does nothing at all for the poor and the working class. the way it works, shelby steel has said every university in america will accept the child of a black doctor ahead of the child of a white cab driver or a black cab driver for that matter. >> well, following up on that point, if i understand what you guys are sort of proposing here, you talk about potentially evolving the idea of affirmative action and broadening it to take a socioeconomic considers, it's not just a race-based thing, it's about low income people, low income white/black person. this mismatch theory you promote, the basic idea that whether it's a low income black or low income wouldn't that person face the same barrier you're describes would be unqualified to compete? wouldn't that apply aacross the board? not just the black people but whites.

>> that's a good point. transparency helps that. if you have that, presumably people who knkow in advance what they get into won't accept preferences into a situation to learn less. they see the graduation numbers are bad and accept an offer by a different school. by giving socioeconomic emphasis more than race, there's a broad pool of l low scs stunlts that schools would use smaller preferences. by extanding the pool you need to concentrate preferences and make them 200 or 300 s.a.t. points. >> richard sander and stewart taylor. thank you for being here. really appreciate it. >> thanks for having us. >> thank you. getting kids into the right college is just one of the many challenges parents have to deal with, but are we raising a nation of children so concerned with perfectionism, performance and possessions they don't know how to be good people? up next we tackle tough issues for 21st century parents and

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what can we do to make sure the daughter gets into the school. >> multilingual exposure. >> note to self, must teach daughter french. last year i moved to new york from a little town in virginia where i lived most of my life, and it sounds like a total culture shock. overall transition has been relatively smooth except in one area, parenting. now, you'd think being a small town virginia parent would not be that different from a big city parent, but suddenly for me the parenting world is bewildering. watching the other parents stack

their 4-year-olds calendars with play dates and standardized test tutoring so they can go to the right kindergarten, i felt like a slacker. am i failing my child? is she already behind? have i doomed her to a life of misery because i couldn't get here in the right chess club? help. here with answers i hope is dr. madeline levine, a clinical psychologist and author whose first book "the price of privilege" was a run-away best seller. in her new best seller she argues that our typical measures of success like good grades and high s.a.t. scores are failing our children. thank you for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> first of all, let's go straight to the title of the book, the easiest measures of success are grades, s.a.t. scores later in life, high-paying jobs. what is authentic success. >> so, the operate word you used

is easiest, so we like them because they're easy to measure. authentic success has, i would say, three components. it is internally felt, it's internally driven, it's resilient and it follows its own path. most of us know that success is not a straight line. that we wiggle and have stops and starts that lead us ultimately to success. i heard the intro, and i was laughing about, you know, are you a good parent because you're worried about your 3 or 4-year-old getting into the right preschool? it is such a misconception that that's what success is. right preschool, right high school, right college, goadman sacks, happy life. it just doesn't work that way. >> well, to that point how do we

balance these competing desires to have a kid who is disciplined, successful, and having a kid who is well adjusted and not totally stressed out? how do we strike that balance? >> you know, it's not an either/or proposition, and i think it depends a lot on what your definition of "successful" is. i would argue that academic measures are a single measure and an important measure of success. it's not that i don't believe we should hold kids to high standards. all the research says that's a good thing to do. but i think we're so incredibly busy holding kids to high standards we've become like ceos. we're kind of looking at the bottom line, aat tt the end of daughter's preschool interview or semester what the gpa is. that tells you really very little about how somebody will feel internally about their life. success is always kind of an

internally felt thing. we know that there are people who write best-selling books that feel lousy. there are people with their own television shows that feel lousy. >> what are you talking about? that never happens. i don't know anybody like that. >> we feel great. >> off that of idea, i have two kids. as a parent you kind of have this stock market thing going on in your head. the ceo, you're ticking in every day, every hour, is my kid doing better? when you do that, you get that short-term mindset to get aaway. it's that achievement-based mindset. how do we get into a mindset that takes that broader, long-term approach so we can see the longer term victories developing character like being good at tennis, writing a book, these sort of things. >> the paradigm in my head is

how we treat our toddlers. that toddler takes a couple of steps and falls down. you say get up again, and they take a couple more steps and fall down again. it's like, get up. we would never think of saying, oh, what a failure that child is. you're going to be flipping burgers for the rest of your life if you keep falling down, right? we sort of just know that that child will have to fall -- i know there are some young children in the group there. that young child will have to fall down 100 to 1,000 times before they get it right. so i think we need a much greater tolerance for letting our kids make mistakes. what's overparenting? it's doing what your kid already do and what technical do and confusing what your needs are just like you opened up with saying, am i a good enough parent? that's about parent peer

pressure. >> what parent doesn't do that? >> every parent is compared to other parents. >> no, that's not true. i mean, there are parents, because listen, here's the reality of it. the risk of maintaining this paradigm earlier is better, moore is better, push your kids, best schools. the risk of that has become so great that the world's organization says about 1 out of every 4 kids is suffering from full-blown anxiety and depression, 17% rate of cuts at our ivy league schools of self-mutilation. 25% of kids are substance abus abuse abusers. what do they rate as the greatest -- excuse me. >> we said wow. >> incredible. >> yeah, it is. it should be wow. because that's the real issue. you know, if we -- if i ended up being here saying to you, yeah, it's not such a great way to raise kids but they're turning

out so well, that's one thing. it's not such a great way to raise kids because we squeezed out all the soft skills, getting along with people, being creative, knowing how to manage, being resilient. there's no time for it your 4-year-old is prepping for a preschool or your college kid has four hours of homework and tutors and all kinds of stuff. there's no time for the things that we know are associated with health. >> all right. >> i do think parents have a choice, and it's a hard choice and it does take courage. that's to say, this isn't working. my kid is not do four hours of homework and getting six hours of sleep because we know the health benefits are so serious. >> all right, dr. levine, thanks so much. up next, a new segment inspired by our own steve kornacki. big bird worse than wall street? so, that happened. ah.

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and the evil genius that towered over them, one man has the guts to speak his name. >> big bird. >> big, yellow, a menace to our economy. mitt romney knows it's not wall street it to worry about but sesame street. >> in a team obama ad clearly meant for us in the media and clearly because it's not arg in many battleground states, big bird is the real menace to the american economy. apparently elmo isn't exactly tickled by the ad. sesame straigeet doesn't want te involved. republicans don't think all of sesame street has to be evil. maybe they need to clean up the street signs and clean up the block. >> it wouldn't team kids to share. >> it would put that sharing in context. >> would you share your food with someone? >> yes. >> that would create a culture of dependency.

>> if they don't centhave any f i'll give it to them. >> you take away the motivation for them to win the food for themselves. did you not read the copy of atlas i loaned you? >> apparently sesame street was only the first stop for mitt romney. now he's stop for romney. it's followed by a kids vote that's correctly predicted the winner of five of the six elections. i think they got gore right in 2000. president obama has agreed to participate taking questions on everything from immigration to bullying to marriage equality, and that's no child's play. and finally, the main event. a rather unique political attack has backfired in a heated maine state senate race. the republican party mailed out flyers on behalf of the incumbent, tom martin accusing his opponent democrat colleen lac howicz of being a gamer. it included a picture of the

candidate side by side with an image of her world of war craft character named santiaga and he is an orc assassin rogue. it even quotes her in-game persona making the argument she's so immature to be a legislat legislator. the story has gone viral and donations have started pouring in to the tune of more than $6,000. this for a state senate race in maine. even republican facebook pages have popped up sympathetic to her hobby. two words seem appropriate for this political attack, game over. all right. you have all heard about the swing voters, but how about the sweet voters? georgetown cupcake from washington, d.c., is putting out donkey and elephant adorned cupcakes and letting the people decide who deserves to win. while it's easy to choose one or the other solely based and their insignias, it's or not essentia

realize it's -- they sent our team a batch. they're here on set. >> thank you. you can see we have donkeys, elephants. >> why are these out of my reach? >> hand krystal a jagiant platef them. if you're neutral it just says 2012. >> the undecideds don't exist. >> another food purveyor is weighing in on the election. pizza hut announced if someone will stand up at the town hall debate and ask the presidential candidates the pressing question of whether they prefer pepperoni or sausage pizza, said person will win pizza hut pizza for life. >> that's great. >> costumes.com is selling masks of the candidates and telling us who is leading and right now obama and biden destroying

romney and ryan. a very scientific poll. >> amazon has their own version of this game. they have a new map based on red and blue books americans are reading. top selling redbook, glenn beck's "coward." blue books, stephen colbert. >> of that pizza hut thing is only like mildly des truck stiff for democracy. we're talking about our favorite fake poll things. i have a classic example. this is from -- i do have -- yeah, okay. >> no, steve -- come here, have some more. >> is there a napkin? >> you don't eat on television. it's a hard and fast rule. >> that's what you always do. >> kornacki has got it all over. >> can you get a close up? >> it's gone. >> you look great. >> where is it? >> don't help him. >> thank you, mom. >> i have a story to tell.

so before i got cupcake all over my face i was going to say the kids pick the president, the cupcakes pick the president. there was a small town a few years ago, one radio station in the town. they said if you are for bob dole, flush your toilet right now. then they waited a minute and they said if you're for bill clinton, flush your toilet now. one town, one radio station. they call up the water department and they are able to tell exactly basically with the volume of water -- >> modern technology. >> we're going. up next, s.e.'s self-described weird vice presidential debate fantasy and the producer read it, they agreed it was in fact a little strange. ...you see they all have something very interesting in common. they have teachers... ...with a deeper knowledge of their subjects. as a result, their students achieve at a higher level.

let's develop more stars in education. let's invest in our teachers... ...so they can inspire our students. let's solve this.

this week the pundit class will spend considerable and deserved time forecasting the vice presidential debate between joe biden and paul ryan. we will talk substance to death. what does biden need to say? will ryan wonk out on the debt and deficit? all important questions for which there is a time and place. but here and now i'd like to spend a minute sharing my fantasy because fantasies are fun and my fantasy about joe biden is bo to get weird. he does away with the restricter plate he drove around with in 2008. a joe biden with a governor is no joe i want to see. in my version biden plays it big and surgically, hazing the young kid from the minor leagues who doesn't know what it's like to perform in the big show. it goes something like this.

>> relax. don't try to strike everybody out. strikeouts are boring. besides that, they're fascist. throw some ground balls. more democratic. >> what's this guy know anyway? he's so great how come he's been in the minors for ten years? if he's so hot how cam they want me instead of him? >> and another thing, you don't know [ bleep ], all right? you want to make it to the show, you'll listen to me. she wants you because she can boss you around, got it? relax, let's have some fun out here. this game is fun, okay? fun [ bleep ]. and don't hold the ball so hard, okay, it's an egg. hold it like an egg. >> who doesn't want to see joe "crash" biden tell ryan -- if he don't speak bull durham fluently, that's your